Your Black World: When Your Eloquence Is Called Into Question, You Must Be Black

When Your Eloquence Is Called Into Question, You Must Be Black

By: Tolu Olorunda

Staff Writer - YourBlackWorld.com

They say they want you successful, but then they make it stressful

You start keepin pace, they start changin up the tempo

- Hip-Hop artist, Mos Def

If one was to pay close adherence to the words of Sen. McCain in Wednesday night’s presidential debate, such an individual would be led into believing that eloquence is not a gift, but rather a tactic of political expediency. Eloquence defined as, "the practice or art of using language with fluency and aptness," took a new meaning in last night's debate. In the debate, John McCain numerously chided his opponent, Sen. Obama, for Obama's "eloquence," which he suggested was nothing other than a tool for confusion, deception and manipulation. Arguing against the Democratic nominee’s stance on off-shore drilling, McCain retorted: “Well, you know, I admire so much Sen. Obama’s eloquence. And you really have to pay attention to words. He said, ‘We will look at offshore drilling.’ Did you get that? ‘Look at.’” Whether Sen. Obama is a skillful politician whose word-play misleads supporters is one thing; but for a nation with an obsession for castigating Ebonics-speaking Blacks, Sen. McCain’s remonstration against Obama’s ability to fluently articulate his proposals is a disturbing development.

Throughout the course of the 2008 presidential race, Sen. Obama has been attacked for much more than his rhetorical steadiness. Earlier in the race, certain Republican operatives expressed disdain for Obama’s prestigious educational background. Karl Rove, Bush’s brain and McCain advisor, went as far as calling Obama “arrogant,” “elitist” and “lazy.” In a widely-circulated column, Rove advised that, "Even if you never met (Obama), you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone." To avoid granting Obama that much credit, Rove noted, in a separate column, that Sen. Obama is comparable to a “trash talking” basketball player, and is “often lazy, given to misstatements and exaggerations and, when he doesn't know the answer, too ready to try to bluff his way through.”

In a day and age when the presidency of a Black man looms larger than ever, and many White brothers and sisters blindly convince themselves to have advanced beyond the stage of bigotry, who can claim, with frank sincerity, that we exist in a decade of “post-racial” politics. Many uniformed white journalists, whose preoccupation with self-congratulation has grown increasingly sickening, are prone to such outbursts of declaring, “The end of Black politics,” and the dawn of a “post-racial,” “post-tradition,” and “post-Black” system of culture. This inference would spit in the face of a 2004 Pew Hispanic study which displayed, in explicit terms, how “the wealth of Latino and Black households is less than one-tenth the wealth of White households even though Census data show their income is two-thirds again as high.”

If a Barack Obama presidency is the hallmark of racial-parity in all matters of human affairs, one can only wonder what yardstick is being utilized for measurement. Sadly to report, I’m not sure Sen. Obama sees things my way, as he once claimed that Blacks had come “90 percent of the way” to equality with whites.